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Confused. . . Step-by-step guide
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Under the step-by-step guide, after choosing a family time period(his,geo,bib) there is a “family booklist” as well as bulletpoint books for different grade levels. Do these family books, and grade books come along with the era chosen? or are they optional? If the are left out is there going to be something in the lesson for the year missing? Can these books be read for free like in AO? Not sure if im just not understanding correctly?
The Literature books do not go along with the history periods. I think they are necessary to round out a CM education. You can read them during a free reading time or incorporate them into your regular school time as you desire. I believe they are organized in such a way that you would need to read a chapter daily (school days) in order to complete the list in one school year. Hope that helps!
The books listed under the “Family” heading for history would be things you would read together as a family. They correlate with the era chose. However, one of those books would most likely be your history spine (the main book from which you draw the most general information for your lessons), and there would be one book there that functions as your geography spine, and the Bible would be your spine for biblical studies.
That said, substitutions or deletions can be made if carefully considered. For example, we are using the SCM guide for history module 2, so we’ve chosen to use Visits to the Middle East for geography. However, we nearly didn’t use that book because I wasn’t sure it fit into our budget this year. If I had found other materials to use, I would have had to substitute that book every week for the Visits book, and I would have simply ignored references to the Visits book in the lessons for each term.
This would have taken some planning on my part, but it can be done. For example, a few years ago, the book Sailing Around the World Alone was listed for geography in a particular module. We tried reading it, but my children simply did not enjoy it at all. After asking others for alternate book suggestions, we settled on Stowaway by Karen Hesse. I found the book on the SCM Bookfinder (or maybe I added the resource myself–I don’t recall), and scheduled it by chapters in the organizer. If you are not using the SCM Organizer, you can just divide it up however it best fits in your year’s plan.
Also important to note is that although the bulleted lists for each grade would seem to indicate that your student should read every book listed for his/her grade level, you know your child best. You can substitute another book, leave out one if you have a struggling reader, add more books for a more voracious reader–whatever works for you. I usually borrow as many of the the grade level books as I can from the library over the summer (or just before I have them scheduled) and pre-read or just leaf through them to make sure I want them to read every single one. For my 8th grader, who is a slower reader, I often choose and schedule the most important books first, then as the year goes along, if she is keeping up with the reading well enough, I might add in a book or two from the list. With my oldest, there is no need to do this since she reads at a faster pace and can easily finish all of the books I have scheduled.
For literature, it is the same thing. However, as the previous poster mentioned, literature books may or may not correspond to the history era you are studying. It’s nice if some of them do, but not absolutely necessary.
You might not schedule all of the literature books from a particular group within a grade level. These are just recommendations, and there are many other books to choose from on many other lists. There have been many threads on this forum that discuss literature suggestions, often with links to various book lists.
HTH,
Sue
Sue, you explained this so much better!
My apologies to the original poster. I misunderstood your reference to the various books listed for history. I am sorry. I hope I did not add confusion!
Ewww! I just noticed that, in the first paragraph, I wrote: “They correlate with the era chose.” I meant to type “chosen” but didn’t catch it before I clicked send….
Yup, I are a homeskoolin’ mom! LOL.
Is the spine for each subject chosen for you, or else how does one go about choosing a spine? Also, many of the posts here on SCM refer to “modules”. Is module another way to say “enrichment year”? -Or does module refer to the hist\geo\bio with module 1 being Gen through Deut & A. Egypt, the numbers corresponding to the historical time periods going in chronological order? (This would mean there are 6 modules\ y years.)
I hope I’m making sense here and aren’t asking questions that hv already been answered somewhere. Is there a way to do a more specific search in the forum posts other than by the clickable topic groups?
TIA!:-)
Hello! Yes, the modules refer to the History/Geography/Bible guides. There are six, to do one per year. Each guide has a spine. They vary depending on the time period. Module 4 uses Famous Men of the Middle Ages and Famous Men of the Reneaissance and Reformation. Modules 5 and 6 uses the Stories of the Nations and Stories of America volumes 1 and 2 that SCM publishes/sells. If you click on the preview pdf in the bookstore, you can see the list of books used. The spine is one of the first books listed as “family”. You can substitute the spine with a different one of your choice if you want to. And substitute any other books you would like to, maybe based on what is available to you or if you already read the one listed.
There used to be a search feature, but it is awaiting software updates. You can go to google.com and type in SCM Forum and then the topic you are looking for. HTH
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